Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
In the self-styled Theatre of Dreams, it is perhaps fitting that one American music legend can turn up to Old Trafford football ground, and with great artistic tongue in cheek, play to the local crowd’s hearts by performing the opening segments to the local anthem of the Stretford End faithful before hitting home with a set list that won’t be heard anywhere else in the country this year.
It could be viewed as a bucket list
romance, my eighty days
staring at you,
getting to know you,
understand you,
hate you,
love you,
be fond of you,
swear at the frustration you cause me,
gently run my fingers across you,
bash down when the right thought
does not come to mind,
hurt you, as you destroy me
become your mirror image, embrace you,
finally leave you be
as when the dog days of August
whimper in heat after snarling
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Stoke the cannons with a perfectly timed raised eyebrow, load up the molten balls with enough innuendo to take apart a battleship on the high seas and set the fuse going with the dogged appreciation. The reminder that Rock and Roll can be entertaining as well good for the heart and let rip, Open Fire, for one band with a sultry, Cavalier smile and an ear for the motif have returned better than ever and if any live album of the genre is worth investigating then The Darkness: Live at Hammersmith is surely it.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There is a certain delight that surrounds Brighton based band Orchards, the steady release of singles confirming the positive creativity that comes from an inseparable friendship, a meaning that comes from a shared history that stretches back across the recent folds of Time and in which the concept of love flourishes. It is idea that sees the band’s new release Losers/Lovers become a fascination, a regard for the enthral, one in which the letters in which sealed, and sometimes unrequited, amour is passionately held.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
As all writers know, Time makes its own rules and quite often doesn’t adhere to them, Time is able to ridicule humanity, make fun of the way it plans and schemes and then sees it comes crashing down, a heartbeat missed, a skip in the fabric of time, and suddenly, as Pink Floyd rightly sang, “Ten years have got behind you.”
Liverpool Sound and Vision 8.5/10
Cast: Chris Thorpe, Jorge Andrade.
There are many futures that become the legend and home for the question of what if? A certain place in to which the once thought possible becomes a loose strand fluttering in the wind of uncertainty, hangs in the air for the realm of the hypothetical and to come and gather it up. Speculative fiction is rife with such stories, the turn of a single feather, the mark of a wrong turn, all leading to roads and arguably other futures in which Your Best Guess is as good as anyone’s but makes for the most riveting of tales and astonishing deep thought.
The rare writing on the Cornish slate
is older than the notion of England,
as it sits now in Tintagel Castle,
a display for the excited
and the learned to ponder over,
it’s meaning lost in Latin and ancient script,
but it must be gleaned in this land of legends,
of old Dumnonia and the last King of Dungarth,
that the script must only contain one message;
Do not put carrots in the pasties.
Ian D. Hall 2018
Roasted Hog,
basted and the cut, succulent,
dripping fat on the stoked
fires, upon which I feel
the burn
like flesh deposits crinkle
and leave me with crackling
on my back,
a taste of cooked meat
hangs in the air, sickly and putrid,
a cannibalised flesh, rotten
now from the inside out,
so bad that even a black fly stops and hovers
for a while and refuses to land,
no blue bottles, just maggots
upon my skin
today.
Ian D. Hall 2018
It is the cruelest trick,
to offer someone a future,
a second chance in which
to make things right
in their heart; this now is the path
before me,
a cruel trick played out,
a future denied,
and last night I tried to dream
but all I saw was the face
of the ideal and the possible,
taken away.
Ian D. Hall 2018
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Eventually you come face to face with what you have achieved, and you see the greatness that others have known for a long time, that the selfless act of promotion in others leads to a far great spiritual richness than can ever be realised; and after 42 years at the helm of Fellside Recordings it would be perhaps considered time for the company and artists to look back on all that has accomplished and smile at the triumph of the endeavour.